Night
by JenniFromtheBlock
Summary: Just a little moment in time with Cristina and Owen.


Owen woke with a start, sitting straight up, a cold sweat dampening his t-shirt. The thunder had startled him out of a deep sleep; the drizzle from earlier in the evening had turned into a fierce storm towards midnight, and loud claps of thunder after the lightning were ominous signs of another sleepless night to come.

He looked around, as if confused by his surroundings, and then the green bedcover, the clothes on the floor, the still figure beside him, all lit by the moonlight seeping through the slats of the blinds, helped remind him where he was. He took a deep breath and exhaled.

"Are you okay?" He heard the question as if it came from far away, and looked to his left. Cristina was lying on her side, watching him, not moving.

"Yeah," he whispered, his voice ragged. He caught his breath and forced himself to inhale and exhale until it seemed normal.

"Do you want to talk about it?" She asked.

He looked down at the comforter, and then turned to his left to look at her. She was still lying on her side, facing him.

"No," he replied.

She watched him, making sure that he was fully conscious of his surroundings.

"Okay. Then go back to sleep."

He continued to look at her for a moment, then slid back down into the bed and lay, looking up at the ceiling.

"Sleep," she whispered.

He lay for a moment longer, then turned on his side, facing her. Her eyes were closed, and her left hand lay flat on the mattress in front of her. Her curly hair tumbled all over the pillow, and the strap of her tank top had slipped off her shoulder. He marveled for a moment at just how beautiful she was.

"Stop staring at me," she said, her eyes still closed.

He blushed slightly, as if he had been caught in the act of doing something forbidden. "I'm not," he said, closing his eyes.

"You are," she said. He opened his eyes again, and she was looking right at him.

They considered each other silently. She thought about how Burke never had sleepless nights, never seemed to doubt or second-guess himself. He had also never looked at her the way Owen was looking at her now.

He thought about the thickness of her hair when he ran his hands through it, the way his worries seemed to recede into the background when he kissed her, the way she tapped a pencil on a desk when she was impatient, and the tiny furrow in her brow when she was working something out in her mind.

"Tell me something I don't know," he whispered to her.

She was quiet for a moment. "There are lots of things you don't know. Where could I possibly start?" She yawned, stretched, and settled back into place.

He smiled weakly. "Tell me something about you that I don't know. Tell me something good so I can fall asleep with good thoughts."

She considered some options, what to say. What could she possibly say that could replace his horrible dreams? She sorted through childhood memories, searching for something happy, something he could hold on to.

"For awhile, my mother wanted me to be a ballerina. I took lessons five days a week, three hours a day for six years."

Owen smiled, thinking of lithe, graceful Cristina, dancing across a stage. "What happened?" He asked.

"I quit," she said. "I didn't like it. I did it for her, and when I was older, I couldn't do it for her any longer. I had to find something for me."

"What did you find?" He watched her eyes, which were no longer focused on him. They seemed far away.

"I rode horses for a long time. I was good at it. The horses loved me, and I loved them."

"Why did you stop?"

"College. No time. Lost interest. Didn't need them to love me any more."

They were still facing each other. He slid his hand out to cover hers.

"Tell me something I don't know," she said.

He shifted uneasily. Telling her something would require him to think back in time. He didn't like to think about before.

"The cheetah is the fastest land animal," he joked.

She slid her hand out from under his and pushed him on the shoulder gently, but firmly enough to make her point.

"No," she said, "Something about you. Something important."

He searched his mind for memories he had tried to suppress.

"When I was a kid," he began, "we always went to a cabin by a lake during the summer. There was a dock and a boat, and my sisters and I would leap into the lake and swim for hours at a time. When the sun was setting my mom would call us out of the water, and we would sit on the beach and my dad would cook burgers and we would make s'mores. Sometimes my dad would tell ghost stories that would scare us, and my mother would get upset because we wouldn't be able to sleep, afraid that the ghosts would come get us." He smiled, remembering.

She watched him as he became lost in thought. The moonlight illuminated the red of his hair. She listened to the rain fall, and saw the flash of lightning over his shoulder through the window. When the thunder hit again, she saw his eyes widen and his body tense. She placed her hand over his and kept talking.

"My father always spoke to me in Korean. It was important to him that I understood where he came from, and what his life was like before he came to this country." She paused, and again he could tell she was looking at him, but no longer seeing him. "When he died, my mother only spoke to me in Korean when she was yelling at me. Which was a lot of the time." She lay there for a moment, and then pushed her hair away from her face.

Owen thought of Cristina as a girl, speaking Korean, riding horses, holding her father's heart in her small hands as he bled to death. He looked at the woman in front of him, who did all those things as a child and grew up to be this strong woman he loved. He looked at her, and watched a range of emotions wash across her face: distraction, awareness, concern, affection, love. And he couldn't understand where the love could possibly come from, but he knew he would take whatever she offered gratefully, and return her love as best he could.

Her eyes were closed, and she appeared to be drifting back to sleep. He reached out and softly touched her cheek. She smiled slightly, and took his hand in hers. Then she turned over, and snuggled her back against him, pulling his arm around her to hold her tight. He breathed in the scent of her hair, a sweet mix of perfume and shampoo, and placed his lips behind her ear.

"I love you," he whispered. She sighed deeply, already asleep.

He lay there, holding her in his arms, listening to the rain and thunder. And eventually, he slept.


End file.
